With
the return of my NHL, the NHL is helping the returning fans and
(anybody else who might stumble across the game) understand the rule
changes with some nifty videos.
Looking at the rule changes, designed to increase goal scoring (aka excitement),
it is hard to see just what the powers that be at the NHL were thinking. Of
course, after seeing the new logo rolled out on July 22nd, it becomes obvious
that creativity really isnt in the NHLs blood.

SMALLER NEUTRAL
ZONE:

Only the NHL
would think that decreasing the amount of space in the neutral zone would
get teams to shy away from using the sleep inducing neutral zone trap.
Teams now have four less feet of neutral zone ice to clog up to thwart an
attack. Call me crazy but I thought the idea here was to increase the flow
and scoring chances? By giving trapping teams less space to cover, youre
actually playing into their hands. Yes, I know two-line passes are history
(for now) and were about to have our umpteenth obstruction crack-down,
but decreasing the neutral zone by four feet actually takes away space from
cherry-pickers and makes the hooking and holding even less necessary for a
neutral zone trap to work.

INCREASING
THE FLOW:

Of the two items
here, only one of these will have the intended effect. The other will actually
serve to cut down on offensive production, much like the smaller neutral zone.
First, reinstating the tag-up offside rule is long overdue. It dont
think it was a coincidence that the neutral zone trap started out right after
tag-up offsides was done away with. Under the old rule, dump and chase
teams were penalized when a player jumped the gun. Teams that wanted to aggressively
fore-check and cut off transition games were penalized too because creating
a turnover in the other teams zone only resulted in a neutral zone draw
instead of a prime scoring opportunity. Allowing tag-up offsides will reward
teams that aggressively fore-check. Teams now have an incentive to fore-check
rather than dumping the puck in deep and vacating the zone to get their trap
set up. How many teams that decide to aggressively fore-check remains to be
seen, but those that do should be rewarded early in this upcoming season.

As for the two-line
pass? Dont believe the hype that it will increase flow and lead to more
breakaways. Remember the 2002 Winter Olympics and the beat-down that Canada
got at the hands of Sweden? Well, the Canadians hadnt adjusted to the
lack of a two-line pass and the Swedes ate their breakfast, lunch, dinner,
and midnight snack as a result. However, Canada adjusted their game and ended
up bouncing back to win the gold medal. Mark my words, teams will adjust and
theyll adjust quickly. Teams will do this by keeping at least one defensemen
(possibly both) in the neutral zone to look out for cherry-pickers and many
veteran NHL defenseman have already publicly stated that they will be making
breaks for the opposing goal less frequently this season. This is going to
create 3 on 5 and 4 on 5 situations (if nobody is cherry-picking) which will
make defending in your own zone a lot easier. It also will give defensemen
a head start on getting back to set up the trap. Finally, with the bluelines
four feet closer to each other, cherry-pickers are going to have less room
to get open for their home run passes.

ICING RULES:

So well
still have races to the puck to make an icing call. Good idea. But teams that
ice the puck wont be allowed to change their players. Huh? However,
if a team ices the puck because of a botched pass, the linesman has the discretion
to wave it off. Oh great . Just what we need, more ambiguity for
the on-ice officials to sort out. What one linesman considers an attempted
pass, another wont. It seems as though as the NHL is trying to keep
teams from icing the puck, but I just dont see how preventing a team
from changing its lines will cut down on them icing the puck intentionally
because all they will do now is race for the bench (to complete a line change)
before the other team can touch the puck to get the icing call. So say good
bye to many of the races for the puck to wave off the icing. While that might
not be such a bad thing, (ask Pat Peake about that) this change will look
pointless by the end of the first night of the regular season. Stupid, stupid
change.

INSTIGATOR
RULE:

So now a player
who is slapped with an instigator penalty in the last five minutes of a game
is ejected from that game and suspended for another game, with the suspension
doubling each time he does this. Furthermore, the head coach gets fined $10,000
that doubles each time such an incident occurs. I thought fighting was down
in the NHL? What is the point of this? Todd Bertuzzi pulled his sucker-punch
stunt on Steve Moore with more than 10 minutes left in the 3rd Period and,
if anything, got less than he deserved from the NHL front office (which is
a whole lot more than what the rule change calls for in the first place).
When was the last time an instigator penalty was called in the last five minutes
of a game? Are we now just changing the rules just to change the rules?

GOALIE RESTRICTIONS:

Smaller pads
= more goals. Well, the NHL sure hopes so. Im not too sure about this
one. But considering that ALL players are getting bigger, faster, stronger,
and are in much better physical condition than they were even just 15 years
ago, reducing the protection a goaltender has just doesnt seem like
a smart idea. I hope I am wrong about this and that goaltenders arent
going to suffer more injuries from doing their job (stopping pucks) than before.
Im sure goalies will adjust to their smaller equipment and cut down
on some of the expected increase in scoring. Yes, goalies like Garth Snow
were a joke, but it was easy to see who was a joke and who was simply trying
to protect himself from hard shooters.

Now when it
comes to goalies roaming and playing the puck, I need this explained to me.
The whole idea behind most of these rules changes is to increase flow and
keep the puck moving. So why, pray tell, are you going to slow the action
back down by restricting goaltenders from moving the puck around? More public
clarification on this rule is going to be necessary because anybody who regularly
attends Caps games knows that most of the fans have no idea what the rules
are despite having top-notch womens hockey refs sitting nearby with
their jerseys tucked into their jeans. To make this really, really simple,
goalies can still move the puck anywhere in front of the goal line and only
directly behind the net behind the goal line. Furthermore weve gone
ahead and painted more lines on the ice to help the already beleaguered officials
correctly enforce this rule. With the intended purpose of increasing scoring
and flow, this rule change seems on its surface to be totally counter-productive
to the stated goals simply because goalies cant go to the corners
to get a jump on starting the rush back up ice (especially with the much despised
two-line pass history, for now). Goalies can still stop hard arounds
and move them forward but soft dumps into the corners that dont make
it out of the no go zone will only lead to scrums in the corners
(and the puck not moving!).

Finally why
does a goaltender violating the no go zone warrant a two minute
penalty?

OBSTRUCTION
CRACK-DOWN:

Oh, theyre
cracking down on the hooking and holding again? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

UNSPORTSMAN
LIKE CONDUCT (aka DIVING):

In addition
to calling minor penalties for diving (which will inexplicably continue to
be assessed with the actual infraction that lead to the dive in the first
place) in the course of the game, the NHL will review game tapes to find infractions
that their dynamic on-ice officials missed. After catching the Penguins er
I mean offenders the NHL will send letters of reprimand, impose fines,
and finally suspend prolific divers. Why do I get the feeling that this will
be just like the continually on-going obstruction crack-down?

SCHEDULE FORMAT:

This year the
Capitals will play each of their Southeast Division rivals 8 times
piece, the rest of the Eastern Conference four times a piece, play Pacific
Division teams just once each on the road, Central Division teams just once
each at home, and none at all against Northeast Division teams this season.
The whole idea behind this is to, stop me if youve heard this before
from the NHL, create more division rivalries. Dont get me wrong, I think
this is a good idea. However this problem was created by over expansion and
relocation. Montreal no longer has their blood feud with Quebec and Washington
is in a division with three teams newer than they are and a relocated franchise.
All this does is ensure more of the New York Rangers/Philadelphia Flyers games
for national TV audiences that the NHL and their TV networks seem
to think we just cant get enough of.

If the NHL,
with 30 teams and six divisions, really wants to increase division rivalries,
here is my suggestion to do so:

#1.Use this new schedule format.

#2. Amend the playoff qualifications so that the top two teams in each division
and the top two third place teams, regardless of record and placement in the
overall conference standings, make the playoffs.

#3. The top two teams in each division then play each other in the first round
of the playoffs with the division champion having home ice advantage and the
two third place qualifiers play each other with the team having the higher
point total (or usual tie breaker scenario) having home ice.

#4. Matchups in subsequent rounds would then be created by the winners of
the first round being seeded according to their finish in the Conference standings
and resume the playoffs as normal.

If this idea had been in place for the 2003-2004 season, these would have
been your first round matchups (top seeds listed first) Philadelphia-New
Jersey, Boston-Toronto, Tampa Bay-Atlanta, Ottawa-New York Islanders, Detroit-St.
Louis, Vancouver-Colorado, San Jose-Dallas, and Calgary-Nashville. Only Montreal
would have been left out of the playoffs, replaced by Atlanta who was 15 points
behind them and none of these matchups took place in 2004. The reason behind
this is to ensure that divisional rivals meet in the first round and 6 of
the 8 first round series would do exactly that. This is what created the rivalries
that currently exist. Teams used to have to beat two teams in their own division
in a playoff series just to get to the conference finals in the old days of
the NHL and this cranked up the intensity of the playoffs because the same
teams were meeting every year. For instance, the Caps really didnt have
a rivalry with the Penguins until we started to meet every year in the playoffs.
The Caps dont really have much of a rivalry with the Devils and thats
largely because weve only met twice in the playoffs. By placing a premium
on finishing in the top two places of your division and no lower than third,
regular season games vs opponents in your own division will become even more
important as well.

No, this idea is not perfect as demonstrated by the Tampa-Atlanta matchup
with Montreal being left out in the cold, but rivalries pack arenas and draw
in the TV audiences. Who wouldnt have loved to have seen Vancouver and
Colorado hook-up in a first round series in 2004?

SHOOTOUTS:

I saved the
best for last. Many, many people want to know just who Caps Nut is. Well,
heres an easy way to find out. When a five-minute four on four overtime
ends without a sudden-death goal, Ill be the one standing up and leaving
the arena. I despise the idea of a shootout and absolutely refuse to watch
it.

There are many
problems with this idea. First and foremost, hockey is a team game and this
gimmick (which all it is) greatly diminishes this point. Deciding games with
a one-on-one competition is just blasphemous. But what really sickens me is
that this gimmick will undoubtedly be declared a success and that this gimmick
will be brought into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Im sorry, but if the
NHL thinks that having Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals being decided by a
shootout will be a boon for the league, they better think again. Remember
the 1994 World Cup? I do. The casual US sports fan was enthralled by the entire
World Cup competition in 1994 and was beginning to warm up to soccer. Italy
and Brazil played a rather decent final game for 90 minutes and the final
went to overtime which yielded another 30 minutes with no goals being scored.
Then came the penalty kicks. The casual US sports fan said huh? You mean those
guys just went 120 minutes and now theyre just going to see who misses
the most to decide this? Soccer in the United States has yet to recover from
that and I wonder if it ever will. Hockey was already considered fringe in
some corners before the lockout and if hockey makes itself more like soccer
in deciding tie games, even more people will see the sport as fringe. I am
glad that I can tell my grandkids that I was there for all 4 overtimes in
1996 and the 3 overtimes in 2003 even though we lost both games. Games like
that are instant classics and using a gimmick to decide them will
end that too.

But heres
the real problem with shootouts. Before the advent of the Regulation
Tie/Overtime Loss people complained about the boring 5 minutes of overtime
hockey as teams ran out the clock to protect their one point in the standings.
When the RT/OTL was introduced, that boring hockey was moved and expanded
to the last 10 minutes of the third period if the game was already tied. At
least overtime got a little more exciting with the 4 on 4 and an extra
point being available. But now teams will have even less of an incentive
to win late in the game and in overtime resulting in yet even more boring
hockey. Why? Well consider that these shoouts are going to take place
after 65 minutes of hockey. Bad ice is the norm in a vast majority of the
NHL and bad ice will lead to bouncing pucks and bad shots. Now to counter
this, the NHL has mandated a dry cut of the ice in front of the
goal to be made by the Zamboni during a two minute break before the shootout.
However, not using water (which is what dry cut means) and completely
resurfacing the ice, the problem wont totally be solved and the shootout,
like the penalty kick, will become a one-on-one contest of who makes the biggest
mistake. Though in hockey the goaltender, instead of the shooter in soccer,
will be the one who makes or breaks the game for his team.

Its one
thing for Larry Murphy to spring Dale Hunter on a breakaway against Ron Hextall
in overtime of Game 7, it is another for a penalty shot to be awarded to Joe
Juneau against Ken Wregget in the second overtime of Game 4, but it is a completely
different animal to send out Alexander Ovechkin, Jeff Halpern, and Dainus
Zubrus for a shootout vs. some Western Conference team in the middle of December.
But Caps Nut! Dont you know that the penalty shot is the
most exciting play in hockey Yes. I am well aware of this. And
do you know why it is the most exciting play in hockey? Because
the penalty shot is a rare occurrence. The advent of the shootout means the
penalty shot is no longer a rare occurrence. But Caps Nut! Dont
you know that the shootout is a big hit in Europe with the fans? Yes.
I am well aware of that. Europeans also love the penalty kick tiebreaker in
soccer that US fans cant comprehend. Furthermore, we fought a little
war in the late 18th Century to get away from direct European influence. At
least here in the United States we did...

Only time will
tell if these rule changes will have the intended effect of increasing excitement
in the game (aka goal scoring). Of course, Ive never felt that more
goals = more excitement. 6-5 games can be just as boring as 1-1 ties. And
another thing, what is so wrong with ties in the regular season? Theres
82 games per team. Theres no need in my opinion to declare a winner
in all of them. Like most people, I think there are too many changes at once.
If I were in charge, I would EXPAND not SHRINK the neutral zone to help teams
with speed beat the trap and bring back the touch-up offsides in order to
reward forechecking. Finally, I would do like the NFL and MLB and create officiating
crews so that the same two linesman and two referees are always working with
each other (barring injury and demonstrated flat out incompetence) in order
to get more consistency with calls but thats it. Im not as impressed
with the other ideas and I dont think they will have much of a difference,
but because the NHL is trying to come back from oblivion, they feel that they
have to do something dramatic. I dont think most of these will work,
and I am very afraid to say that the gimmicks of 4 on 4 overtime and shootouts
are here to stay.